I think we tend to use Orwellian to describe less drastic measures than having rats chew faces off, though I take the point msmsith537 makes about hyperbole. But there is something OrwellianLite about tracking kids. It is in part a reflection of the bureaucratic, market impulse to grow and seek efficiencies of scale (fewer bigger schools, e.g.), then measure and manage the inputs/outputs (students, in this case) rather than seek human-sized answers.
Adults tend to impose solutions that they would denounce as creeping Orwellianism on those they can control because it makes the adults’ lives easier. I would not be surprised if the Venn diagram of “adults in favour of this school scan program” and “adults who denounce FLOCK cameras and photo radar for speeding” overlaps more than you’d think.
But authoritarianism often starts small and builds, and often with the best of intentions. There is something insidious in fact, if not intent, in getting kids accustomed to such monitoring and permission-seeking (no badge, no entry, sucks to be you!).
If you consider a lawsuit a problem, yes, and school districts definitely do. How many times have you seen this story, or one very much like it, splashed on the evening news: “Child left asleep on school bus.” or “Child never returns home from school”. The idea is this:
We know if your child did or did not board the bus this morning.
We know if your child did or did not exit the bus and scan into school.
We know if your child did or did not attend school or did or did not arrive late.
We know if you child did or did not leave school and at what time.
We know if your child did or did not board the bus to go home.
We know if your child did or did not exit the bus at his or her stop.
Do you mean in my town, or having happened at some point, somewhere, in a nation with 50+ million school children?
In my town, never. In the nation, maybe a few times a year.
You want to ask how many times kids failed to go to school, that number is huge, it’s like 10 million of that 50 million miss about 20 days of school every year (i.e. 20% miss more than 10% of school days every year).
See, this is exactly where my brain first went first, as I remember constantly leaving my ID in the dorm in college, even with a lanyard that held a small wallet and my dorm key. I would have lost it so much more as a kid.
And it’s why I think it’s only okay if there is some way for the kid to be allowed on provisionally, maybe along with some way for the bus driver to check in someone without an ID, verifying that the pic matches the kid.
It actually made me wonder if a fingerprint system would be better, as at least you can’t lose that. I wonder how many people who are all gung ho on IDs would find that makes it seem far more Orwellian.
We’ve been doing it since the dawn of history. Or at least, those of us whose descendants survived until now have. The kids who weren’t being tracked all got et by saber-toothed tigers.
Even before this system was implemented, school bus drivers still had to track who was on their bus, most likely by using a pen and a list on a clipboard. This does the same job as the clipboard, but quicker and easier. And if a kid loses their ID, the driver presumably falls back on the clipboard, or something like it.
Really? People here grew up with school buses that had drivers check kids off a list? More to the point, is that common practice today? Land sakes, I’m going to write a letter to the newspaper!
Checked with niece who took the bus in the 2010s, no one checked or tabulated or called if you didn’t show. This was an urban area. 60 years ago in a rural area, no one checked or called, in my experience. This must vary greatly by region and school district.
Alongside the difficulty of kids losing ID cards is the likelihood of them swapping ID cards. With an electronic system in place, drivers will be less likely to visually clock who is actually boarding/getting off their bus.
Yeah, I think this is just an annoying hoop to jump through. Kids will forget or lose their IDs. I forget to bring my work badge to work about once a month and have to use a temp badge for the day.
As long as the kid gets to ride if they forget I don’t care that much. There are much bigger privacy invasions that are significant issues right now (facial recognition, data collection).
It might be overbearing when he gets older, but for now (9 years old about to start 4th grade) it’s nice to know he’s going to and coming home from school. I’m at work for both events.
There’s an extra wrinkle this year, too. babygnu is transferring into a magnet program at a new elementary school father away. AIUI, he’ll take a normal bus to his old school then take a shuttle bus from there to the new school. (Return trip, I think, is a shuttle directly to our stop.) With the added transfer(s), I’ll breathe easier with the card swipes.
We have his card clipped to his backpack on a retractable card holder, just like what I use for work. The only time he’s “lost” it was when there vinyl card sleeve broke and it slipped out - returned the next day.